Arad isn’t throwing in the towel

Once a model of urban vision, the closest city to Masada is battling to overcome economic crisis and social transition.

The Arad Towels factory stands empty.
(photo credit:ANAV SILVERMAN)

We wanted to build a new city in the desert, a modern city that would transform the entire region,” recalled the late Aryeh Eliav decades after having led, in 1961, a knot of planners through the treeless summits overlooking the southern Dead Sea.“We climbed the Arad Heights,” he waxed poetic, “and when we reached the national watershed at an elevation of 600 meters, we imagined – as if in a mirage – a city’s houses, towers and streets, as we were intoxicated by the view, the clear and dry air, and the sense of Genesis.”